Friday, August 26, 2016

Galillee's Magdalena will make you much more than a happy meal (8-21-16)

For our last night in the Galilee our tour guide, Amir, suggested we go to
Magdalena in the small town of Migdal located just north of Tiberias on the Sea
of Galilee. 0or Kinneret Lake.

When we arrived shortly after 7 one other table was occupied and the huge
second floor space facing out to the lake seemed to be worse than dead. We need
not worry as he had chosen what they call in Israel a Chef Restaurant, which
means that the chef likes to play with food and make our experience very
special; I guess we would call this fine dining back home.

I chose the sea fish Sashimi to start with which turned out to be a super
raw tuna with goat cheese, Mediterranean spices, red Endive and fennel fronds
that was absolutely magnificent not to mention beautiful. Remember that pictures
are always available for you to view on my Facebook page. Will chose Zahara
which was a fried cauliflower with tahini, Curry and tomato salsa with pickled
mango.

Samuel was feeling quite full and he chose simply the tabouleh salad which
turned out to be a monstrous bowl of salad that was quite heavy on the parsley
side. There's no way on earth that any person could have finished it by
themselves.

We had the Yatir Vineyard viognier a week before in Jerusalem and comes
from the Negev Desert near the town of a Arad, so we chose their Rose a which
was also superb. Delicious bread arrived which had a tomato and nut spread
which was also irresistible.

For the main course our guide chose a lamb Shawarma with hummus caramelized
onions and pine nuts which he declared to be one of the best he has ever had. I
had an extremely rich scallop risotto with fresh peas and topped with a crayfish
foam with slices of black truffle that was so intense I could not finish all of
the delicious arborio rice.

Will's portion of lamb stew with couscous and chickpeas had to be bigger
than his entire head I think it was like an osso bucco gone bananas.

We got a kick out of this sign on the men's room where it said "men to the
left because women are always right."

It was a delicious meal and boy am I glad that we had our driver to take us
up the Steep hairpin curves on the Mountainside back to our hotel.